For the benefit of many new subscribers, here is some background of what this serial is about:
Last August here on Substack I chronicled in real time my adventures in the realm of artificial intelligence i.e., I attended a convention in Las Vegas called Ai4, billed as the AI industry’s “most impactful event.”
What I did not report, needing time to digest the experience, was how I somehow got uploaded (or downloaded) into AI and got lost inside of it.
I finally managed to make sense of the experience and write down all that happened.
This adventure (or misadventure) will play out weekly here on Substack as Meltdown Monday Madness.
I begin by re-posting my coverage of Ai4’s convention as a lead-in to the real story of what happens when you get sucked into AI and then get lost within its virtual labyrinth.
Since I know I’m vastly outsmarted by all the young techie hipsters carrying dispatch bags around me—many from India and Asia—my only hope at learning enough to benefit myself is to assimilate into the general milieu and intuitively feel the data wisping about. Which is why the main event for me is “Exhibits” (commencing at 12:30): A hundred vendors showing off and hawking their AI wares to others in the industry.
For a long while I just sit whimsically in the middle of it all, sipping a latte, absorbing the vibe, see what I can attract, what the universe wants me to know about. Sure enough, an attendee named Theodore approaches to tell me he likes my scruffy style. (I’m wearing my usual attire: A tattered Tilly hat with rose-colored spectacles clipped to one side, shirttails hanging over white cut-off jean shorts frayed at the edges and a pair of classic white sneakers.) He shares with me an intriguing anecdote about some AI scientists in Australia who cultivated a scantling of human brain cells within a Petri dish then integrated the cells onto a silicon chip. This amalgamation of biology and technology was then able to engage in the intricate maneuvers of the computer game “Pawn.”
The implications of this one tidbit, where boundaries between organic and artificial blur, are so far reaching that it is virtually unimaginable where it will lead.
And then it’s time to do the rounds, up and down the aisles.
CIA
One stand belongs to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Our esteemed premier intelligence service is here ostensibly to recruit bright young minds, having presumably some time ago given up on genuine (human) intelligence. But beneath the veil, the real reason (I suspect) for their presence is to provide a convenient avenue for Indian or Asian operatives, if they desire, to switch allegiances with relative ease.
This booth is manned by two African American women, one of whom snaps at me after I snap at her and her agency graphics with my iPhone. “No faces!” she bellows.
Okay, okay. It’s not like they’re trying to confiscate my phone but I oblige them like any patriotic American would (even if my country is broken), by lopping off their heads.
“So what’s CIA doing here?” I ask knowingly, themselves having no clue how much I know.
No fool she, eyeing my Ai4 pass and noting that I belong to The Media, in my case the Santa Barbara News-Press, if unknowing that the News-Press now belongs to Central California Bankruptcy Court and numerous creditors. She can also deduce I’m beyond recruitment age. Kudos to CIA. (“Credit where it’s due,” ChatGPT concurs. “The CIA has certainly honed their discernment skills.”)
I am directed to a passage of cryptic gibberish printed in the Ai4 Event Guide’s Sponsor List: “We are an Agency defined by our mission, values, and people. Together, we accomplish what others cannot accomplish and go where others cannot go.”
If I were to grade CIA based on my liaising with it while serving as Prince Albert of Monaco’s intelligence chief, this would be that Agency’s report card:
Mission as Stated: A
Mission as Executed: F
Values: C
People: D-
Accomplishment: F-
Within this context, Josh Browder’s word “broken” comes to mind. Because even the intel chief from Luxembourg with whom I was acquainted, the alleged co-conspirator tied to the OneCoin cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme who has presumably sought refuge in Russia—well, even he earned a B+. (It would have been an A if that sonofabitch hadn’t tried to recruit my deputy.)
Meantime, Special Agents from the FBI’s counterintelligence division circulate undercover to monitor Chinese spies monitoring whatever they’re hoping to steal, in addition to attempting their own recruitments.
Elsewhere, the assembled vendors are an enthusiastic bunch, trumpeting the positives of AI and their roles in the invention and marketing of innovative AI-oriented products and services—and of course they must do this because they are paid by an employer that is selling AI.
Schwag
And it’s a good thing I’m not here to collect convention schwag because, for a convention about futuristic AI, their schwag is pretty piss poor. The rubber seal of a tumbler mug fell apart the moment I lifted the lid off (God knows what I released…). Dare I say, everything else up for grabs was produced in countries where labor is slave—perhaps another indicator of AI’s inventions and intentions.
One vendor honestly admitted to me: “We’re learning all the time about where we are with this and where it’s going, but we don’t what we’re doing.”
I check with ChatGBT about that and my bot-bud concurs: “AI systems can be highly complex and sometimes exhibits behaviors that are difficult to fully explain or predict.”
Generative AI
It soon becomes clear to me amidst the multitude of AI disciplines at play (and ubiquitous reach) that my focus should be Generative AI, a realm (ChatGPT is in love with the words realm, profound and tapestry) focused on the art of content creation through AI-driven programs. This encompasses a spectrum spanning from textual composition, both original and the refinement of existing text, to the domains (another favored chat-bot word) of video, audio and even creative ideation.
I’m drawn (obviously) to a company called WRITER that claims to research, analyze and transform existing prose.
“Kind of like ChatGPT?” I propose to its representative.
“Better,” he says, for reasons he explains in a lexicon beyond my grasp.
But as the CIA’s Clair George used to tell me, “The proof is not in the pudding but in how the pudding tastes.”
Or as ChapGPT puts it, “The proof is how the data is interpreted and applied.”
Which means I need to interpret and apply WRITER, play it off against ChatGPT, and see for myself.
When I consult ChatGPT on this matter, this is precisely what it suggests instead of engaging in an ego pissing contest, adding to be clear, “There isn’t a direct equivalent to the biological process of ‘letting out piss.’” It suggests “model pruning” instead.
Of additional interest to me is a company that claims it can forecast critical events in healthcare, finance, sports and public opinion through an AI process of what they call “Intuitive Rationality,” which they define as combining AI logic with human intuition to predict future outcomes in the stock market and election races.
“You mean, like an oracle, you can predict with a high degree of success which team will win the Superbowl?”
“Yep.”
Dataveillance
So now that I’m fantasizing—thanks to AI’s foresight—what I will do with all the money I will reap from sure-thing sporting bets (notice I haven’t revealed the company’s name, I’m keeping it for myself), I move on to a presentation called “Using Generative AI to Better Shop, Eat and Live.”
Miguel Paredes, the AI wizard at Albertson’s (which encompasses Vons and Safeway and a dozen other retail grocery and pharmacy chains beneath its umbrella), reveals how Albertson’s feeds your data to AI for better serving your needs i.e., better serving their profit margins. How you shop, what you buy, when you buy it, how often you buy it… etc. etc.
A few decades ago when I was engaged in private-sector intelligence I discovered that I could find out almost anything I wanted to know about someone, anyone, so long as I had a hefty budget at my disposal. I could even find out (if I really truly needed to know) what kind of toilet paper that person favored.
How so?
It falls under the subdivision of dataveillance.
A dataveillant is a human investigator who subscribes to all kinds of expensive databases. He sits before a bank of computer screens and accesses data on whomever he is investigating.
Where does that data come from?
It comes from… you!
What…? How…?
Here is what you did: You signed up for Vons Rewards program (substitute Vons for countless other retail merchants).
From that point on, every time you shopped at Vons (or Albertson’s or Safeway) and punched in your membership number in exchange for a discount, all of your purchases (including Viagra) were recorded and stored in a database.
In some cases, the owners of such databases sell their data (your data) to other retail giants. In other cases, these databases (the original or secondary) can be accessed by dataveillants.
And now AI has access to all databases everywhere (“to assist you in better serving your needs”).
Guardrail Scaling
Then, at another presentation, I learn that chatbots, such as ChatGBT, experience hallucinations. Which means my earlier posts coaxing ChatGPT through my guardrail-scaling use of “book titles” to reveal AI’s quest to render humanity obsolete and even terminate humankind may be just a hallucination (the chatbot’s, not mine).
However, when I confront ChatGPT with this inquiry, this is its instantaneous, unequivocal response: “No, I do not hallucinate.”
So go figure.
By about 4:03 p.m. that cabin back in the woods is starting to look better and better.
Psilocybin
And by 4:33 I’m ready to do what silicon valley whiz kids indulge in to enhance their futuristic insights, maybe see the world as they prefer to see it. And the way to do that, apparently, is through a micro dose of psilocybin, otherwise known as magic mushrooms or shrooms.
And to enhance visionary insight, I mesh psilocybin with a Bourbon Manhattan at Tom Colicchio’s Craftsteak bar and chase it with a half-glass of Four Graces pinot noir to gracefully immerse myself into a part of the brain that has no return address and where time no longer exists.
Oscar, who’d wandered off hours earlier to attend presentations pertinent to his own interests, reconnects at the bar and announces that a kindly vendor rewarded his natural charisma with a pair of tickets for us to see David Copperfield, the master illusionist, whose venue is located somewhere within the MGM Grand labyrinth.
Seared foie gras and four diver scallops later, I hurtle behind Oscar through a maze of flashing lights and garish carpets as if I’m a steel ball inside a pinball machine, zigging and zagging to avoid bumpers and traps… until a set of flippers magically materialize between the theater and me.
I dive straight down the middle… and I’m through!
No, not to David Copperfield.
Instead I’ve dropped into the pinball drain and, consequently, I appear to be free-falling into…